


There’s No World Without You in it

by DisasterLesbean



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-09 18:50:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19481869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisasterLesbean/pseuds/DisasterLesbean
Summary: “You live in a world of time travel and dimensional manipulation and yet you doubt.” It walks in front of her, towards her window. “You will take my deal.”“No.”“Even the smallest possibility of bringing her back will crumble your will.”“No.”





	1. I Blink and You’re Gone

She knows something isn’t right. The traffic is gone. She watched her hands turn to ash before her very eyes. She should be dead. She doesn’t understand the exact mechanics but she knows she shouldn’t be here. She’s here regardless. She’s here but the cars aren’t. People around her look around confused and disorientated. Fury locks eyes with her through the building chatter. 

They died, she’s certain they did, but she’s here.

A portal opens.

There’s armies on the other side. She can see legions of soldiers facing off against each other. More importantly, she sees the avengers. 

“Go, I’ll take care of these people.” Fury’s grasp is heavier than the ash it should be. She wonders if he feels the difference, she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel different but she knows she should.

“I’ll bring them home.”

“I know you will.”

She steps through the portal and jumps into a battle she has no understanding of. She has skills, she can fight and kill, so she does. She kills anything that attacks the avengers and their army. She doesn’t know the battle but she knows to trust them. To trust Natasha.

She protects Parker while he has the gauntlet, the infinity stones, but she doesn’t see her. Natasha. She’s been fighting for some time now but she hasn’t seen Natasha. She sets it from her mind when a sword comes too close to her throat. Thinking is for later, surviving matters now.

When the enemy turns to ash, she is grateful. She’s bloodied and battered. Her body is weakening and her blows becoming weaker, slower. Whoever won did it right on time.

She finds them gathered around Stark’s body.

She didn’t expect that. She didn’t really think they could die. They are titans, the avengers. She’s seen them save the world against all odds so many times death seemed like an abstract concept. An impossibility for the heroes. 

The avengers and their close friends are gathered around Stark’s body. No one has moved him yet. Everyone is mourning, it’s not the time. Pepper’s hands still run across his body fleetingly as if she’s still trying to comfort him. She thinks it does. Wherever he is, Maria is sure he feels Pepper. Everyone is here. Except the one person she needs.

Barton catches her eye. He looks different from the last time she saw him. He looks harder. His face carved with lines that hadn’t been there last time, he looks older and tired. His gaze burns into Maria’s, it’s locked onto. Being the subject of possibly the most accurate sniper is a chilling feeling but Maria has never been one to be easily cowed. His foot shuffles against stone, the first sound but muffled tears and comforting noises. He looks as if he wants to move toward her but isn’t sure. He commits to the action.

He walks over to her limping slightly. The battle is wearing on his body heavily. She walks to him, meeting him halfway. “I’m sorry Maria.” 

He’s never called her Maria before. Not even after shield fell and they became more friends than deputy director and agent. Not even when she met Laura and his children. It’s always been Hill and Barton.

His eyes are glistening but he won’t look away from Maria. His hand keeps flexing, tightening and untightening. He looks miserable. 

He looks like he’s lost something precious.

She can’t find Nat. She needs to find Nat because she can’t handle Barton’s expression. His sorrow. She turns to look for her, to find her, when Barton’s hand grasps her shoulder. His grip is sure and strong. He’s gripping her like he needs to support her, like he needs to be there for her. He doesn’t need to be, she’s fine. Everything is fine.

“She’s gone.” It’s quiet. Respectful to the people gathered mourning Stark. For Maria, it bangs like a gunshot. It tears through her flesh and shreds her heart to bloody pulp.

Heroes can’t die, titans can’t fall, yet she’s lost Natasha.

The world isn’t making sense. She is gone and then she is back, she’s fighting some battle, and now Natasha is supposedly dead. Nothing makes sense. Her mouth opens, she intends to refute him, but nothing comes out. She’s mouthing the words that will never be, denials she knows better than to make while Barton looks devastated. She needs to deny it but she can’t. Barton would never lie about this. 

She grabs his forearm and tugs him into an uncharacteristic hug. It’s not their relationship or it wasn’t until now. Now, they’re hugging. They’re holding the broken parts of each other together so they don’t spill across the others. 

“When it happened.” Rogers’ voice is muffled, the sense of propriety is quieting everyone. Despite this, his voice always carries. It came with the shield. “After the shock wore off, she called you. She kept calling you. She was frantic. She ran off trying to reach you. She never did.” Maria has pulled back from Barton, trying her best not to cry in front of people who aren’t Natasha. 

She’s Commander Maria Hill, she does not falter.

Rogers’ words hurt. She can imagine Natasha’s fear. Not knowing whether the person she loves is alive or ash. Not having a way of knowing for hours. Then the confirmation that yes, they are gone. 

She knows what it feels like because she hasn’t been able to find Natasha all day. She knows what it’s like because now she’s the one discovering Natasha’s fate. Rogers is asking a question but she doesn’t know how to answer him. The unspoken question bounces around. What were you two?

Her fingers twitch uselessly, pawing at the fabric of her pants. She can feel it’s still there, resting innocently in her pocket. Resting there for over five years. She’d been carrying it even before she was gone. She slides down into a sitting position, knees bent hands braced on her thighs. Pressed against the ring. Pushing into it, deep and deeper. It digs into the meat of her thigh and it hurts just enough.  
She takes it out and holds it with all her might. The edges dig into her hand but she holds tighter. Holds it against hope, holds it against tears, holds it even when Barton slides down next to her. His arm comes across her shoulders and he tucks her into his side. 

“She had one too. I thought it was a keepsake or something from her undercover days.” That’s what does it. The tears break free in front of more people than she’s cried in front of since her birth. She accepts Barton’s, no...Clint’s, comfort and buries herself in his embrace. 

_“What’s your greatest fear?” Natasha’s fingers are digging into the soles of Maria’s feet when she asks. She hadn’t expected Natasha’s question. She’s been absent since they embraced each other._

_“Why?” Natasha is clean from the fight but her eyes are still hard, part of her is still there._

_“Clint lost control, Loki just took him over.”Natasha sounds haunted. Maria understands. She feels a wave of empathy for Barton._

_“That’s your biggest fear?”_

_“I fear losing control, becoming what I was. Hurting the people I love, hurting you.” Maria leans forward and kisses Natasha, a hand trailing down her face._

_“You would never hurt me.”_

_“I wish that were true. With devices like the scepter…” She looks away from Maria and gathers herself. “What’s yours?”_

_“Losing you.” It’s honest, too honest judging by the way Natasha flinches back. Maria feels herself recoil at the level of vulnerability she lets two words put her at. Usually, not even Natasha can pull that out of her. Seeing the ghosts and pain etched across Natasha’s face made her words too easy, too real. “I mean-“_

_“Don’t.” Natasha smiles at her disarmingly. “I was just surprised.” Did she think no one would care? Maria wouldn’t be surprised. Natasha still thinks no one cares even with Barton and her, even Fury cares. She suspects the Avengers, a flaming mess if anyone bothered to ask Maria, will become another support for Natasha._

_“You shouldn’t be. You’re worth missing Romanoff.”_

_Natasha scowls at her. “Romanoff now? What happened to Nat oh please keep going-“ Natasha yelps when Maria half tackles her. She aims at her ribs and knows she succeeds when she feels Natasha’s full bodied laughter._

“Guess I ended up a widow.” The ugly bitter laugh causes Clint to crinkle his brow.

“She made the same terrible joke.”

Maria needs to not be here. She can’t be here. Here, where another rough sob breaks free from her heart and shatters at her feet. Where everyone she knows can see her fall apart. 

Keep it together, Hill. Keep it together.

Potts moves and sits on Maria’s other side, leaning her head against her shoulder. Seeking and offering comfort. It helps. The strength shared between two who lost the love of their life. 

Parker takes up Potts’ vanguard over Stark’s body. They can’t stay here collapsed upon one another forever. They have to take Stark’s body to safety. They need to deal with half the universe coming back. For now, they rest.

Stark’s funeral is before Natasha’s. 

It’s a solemn affair. A hero gone too soon. A father leaving behind too many children and a wife who spent too much time waiting. 

She wasn’t particularly close to Stark. She was technically friends by societal standards but they rarely spent much time alone. Seeing all those gathered to mourn him, all those who love him, she breathes out a shaky breath. He is, was, so much like Natasha. A good person who could never believe they deserved better. Someone who believed themself incapable of loving. 

If only Natasha could see how many people showed up to her funeral. She could have seen just how many people she’s touched, just how many people care for her. Rogers told her how Natasha held them together during the five years. How she had become everyone’s touchstone. She had become the heart of the avengers. She always had been, Maria would argue. She is the center, the one they all connect to. Rather, she was the center.

Maybe that’s why Maria feels so listless. 

She always knew Natasha had a dangerous job. Being an avenger is risky. She never really thought she’d lose her. She’s Natasha, the Black Widow, how could Maria have ever really prepared to lose her.

Weeks passed in a blur.

She wakes up because she has to, she eats because she has to, she works because she has to. The world is in disarray, half the world is back and there’s a lot of work to be done. She keeps moving because she has to, because Natasha would want her to. Even though she keeps moving she feels empty.

She’s a corpse dancing to the universe’s whim.

It’s not hard to avoid the others. Everyone is caught up in themselves. Reunited with missing people, mourning and moving on from those who didn’t come back. After the funerals, she doesn’t see them for months. Until Clint interferes.

“Jesus, Hill.” Clint’s nose is scrunched in disgust. He’s ladling Maria’s breakfast before he tosses it into the sink.

“Clint.” She doesn’t ask how he got in. She knows better. Natasha and him can get in anywhere they please.

“Pack your bags.”

“Try again.” They may not have their old ranks but she wouldn’t be ordered by a man who was her agent for the majority of the time she’s known him.

“She wouldn’t want this.”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare. I’m working, I’m taking care of myself, I’m doing what she’d want.”

“You’re going through the movements. You’re alone. She wouldn’t want that. She’d hate it.”

“I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

“I should have been here earlier. I thought the others were looking out for you.” It’s an apology, one Maria doesn’t need or want. “So, pack your bags. Laura is making dinner. Figured you’d be surviving off of paste.”

“Oatmeal isn’t paste.”

“Hill, just, pack your bags.” Barton’s tired. She can see that much. He’s older than she remembers. They all are. Five years that she didn’t live had lined all their faces. Somehow, he’s even older. A far cry from the young man she used to work with.

It hits her hard. She remembers the bright eyed agent. He wasn’t naive, he hadn’t escaped childhood unscathed. He had a terribly traumatic childhood. Despite it, he grew into a jokester. Happy, or at least good at masking himself with humor and cheeky smiles. She’s known him long enough to see even that rust and break off. Pieces of him rubbed raw and bleeding. He’s not that agent anymore.

She packs her bags. Natasha loved Clint. He is a part of her in a way, two inseparable souls. Natasha would hate him suffering. Maria goes for Natasha and to a lesser extent, Clint himself.

Laura does have dinner ready. It was the first thing she’s eaten in months that isn’t oatmeal or chicken. Laura spends a lot of time watching Clint. Maria knows Clint can see it, feel it. There’s a tension that exists between Clint and Laura that Maria had never witnessed.

They’re the sort of couple that are inevitable. They’re the commas in each other’s sentences, never ending and always continuing. Yet, there’s tension. An unspoken thickness that hangs between them. It could be the time. It could be the blood that paints shadows in Clint’s eyes. 

She starts working from the Bartons’. Somehow, she ends up living there. 

Laura makes sure she eats, Clint makes sure she doesn’t push herself, and she helps mend their relationship. It’s a symbiotic relationship. She’s spent enough time with the family that it isn’t odd, they didn’t really need to get to know each other. Although it’s a peaceful existence living with the Bartons, she can’t move on. It reminds her of the home she no longer has. 

It reminds her of early mornings with Natasha’s cold feet and Liho’s lack of manners. It reminds her of the weight of Natasha’s arms around her waist, her chin digging into Maria’s shoulder. It reminds her of all the times she teased Natasha over her height. 

Barton lost his friend, a member of his family, but she lost her whole family. She lost her home.

It’s a year from the day she returned things change.


	2. You Blink and I’m Gone

The weather is hectic with storms on the horizon. The Bartons went to the store before the worst so they could bunker down in the house until it passed. She stayed behind because Quill needs help deciphering a code. He is still looking for his family and she feels obligated to help. She wonders if it will help, finding a ghost of the woman he loves. A version with no memories of who they were. She hopes it does.

She’s alone in the house but doesn’t think much of it. She’s been alone for the majority of her life. It’s nothing new. The chill in the air that slithers into her room, crawls up her spine, is new. Her head snaps away from her work in alarm. She became the Deputy Director of Shield, she’s a Commander, she has led more strike teams than anyone else in Shield, she’s fought for her whole life. She knows when she’s in danger. She knows from experience when she’s in the crosshairs.

She stands and turns around, the storm is over the house now. Thunder explodes louder than spaceship engines. The windows shake and the rain patters against the roof. The sun has been drowned in the dark grey of the clouds. Her heart speeds up as the adrenaline floods her body. She’s not alone in the house.

She feels its presence behind her before she sees it. 

The robe moves like there are thousands of beings beneath it. Rumbling in waves and ripples. Some larger and some smaller. Sometimes the fabric snaps wildly as a group dances about while the rest moves at a leisurely pace. There’s no curiosity, no desire to look under the robes. Only a gnawing fear of what lies beneath. A primal urge to lean away from it.

She wants to run. Her mind is screaming at her to run. This creature isn’t right. She’s a gazelle, stalled in a plain, looking at her hunter. She’s never felt this way. Even against the strongest enemies she wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t cower. This creature is something else. 

Cold tingles dance across her nerves, fear stealing away the bottom of her stomach.

“Maria.” Its voices echo, several voices laying over each other. Only Natasha ever really uses her name, occasionally Fury. Recently, the Bartons have been using it. Hearing her name come from this creature causes a distruring sensation to slip under her skin. It’s irritating but she knows if she scratches at it she’ll bleed.

“What do you want?” It has to have a reason. It wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. Perhaps it wants her access. Perhaps it wants the Avengers. Maybe it’s here for the Bartons, she wouldn’t let it get near them. Not the family that has slowly become hers. The last precious thing she has. 

“It’s not what I want. It’s what you need.”

“What do you think I need?”

“Your home.” She falters, giving it the opening it seeks. “I can give her back to you.” Her breathing becomes shaky, she doesn’t believe this creature but even the possibility. The smallest possibility to feel Natasha’s laughter, see her sharp grin and soft smile.

“You don’t have that power.”

“You know nothing of my power.” Its voices comes from behind her, close to her ear. She doesn’t turn. She should, she shouldn’t give it her weak side. Years of training dictate this. Never turn your back to an enemy. Yet, it doesn’t seem smart to turn. Predators attack if people run, if they’re too quick. Turning would be too quick. 

“No one has that power.”

“You live in a world of time travel and dimensional manipulation and yet you doubt.” It walks in front of her, towards her window. “You will take my deal.”

“No.”

“Even the smallest possibility of bringing her back will crumble your will.”

“No.” 

“Maria! Grab that damned cat.” Natasha’s voice floats around the room, happiness coating her words. Laughter infiltrating the demand. She sounds the same. Maria listens to Natasha’s voicemail, watches the few videos Natasha allows of herself, Maria hasn’t forgotten how she sounds.

It never sounds like this.

It’s always through microphones and metal. This sounds organic. Like Natasha’s laugh really comes from her lungs. It sounds so real it severs Maria’s threads of will.

Maria knows the creature is right.

“What do you want?” 

“I want nothing. I offer a deal.” 

Maria has to swallow her pride. An action harsh enough she nearly chokes. “What are your terms?” 

“A soul for a soul.”

“You want me to die to bring her back?”

“You are incorrect. I want your soul for her return. You will continue living.” Maria is unnerved by this creature. She is desperate to see Natasha again but she has never been a fool. She knows there’s more, there’s something being left out. Why ask her, why now. It needs her, she’s sure of this. It keeps arguing it needs nothing but she knows better. Everyone she deals with needs something. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rich playboy or some alien in a robe.

She knows she shouldn’t accept, she shouldn’t even humor it. Shield has strict protocols regarding these kind of beings for a reason. Their deals are never fair, never equal, but it’s offering her a deal she can’t refuse. 

It’s offering her Natasha.

“Bring back Stark as well. Tony Stark. Iron Man.” The creature’s teeth gleam. Lightning glistens off wet grey teeth. Too many teeth, more than any one human has.

“I will allow this.”

“And-“

“Enough. Your soul for the fallen spider and broken machine.” 

She wishes she is a different person. Stronger. Weaker, perhaps. Someone not so willing to be rid of her soul just for the possibility of seeing Natasha again.

“Deal.” Lightning strikes the tree outside her window with a thunderous crash. It snaps and cracks, the tree falls over destroying the roof in its path. Maria moves to dodge but is still stuck by a falling branch. She feels it tear across the side of her face, dragging from above her ear to the curve of her jaw. The blood splatters against the wood floor somehow louder than the storm. Steam rises from the fallen blood as she presses her fingers against her jaw, stemming the flow of blood. “Where do I sign?”

“You already did.” It’s pleased and the sound makes her nauseous. Lightning splashes against her eyes, blinding her temporarily. When her vision returns, the creature is gone. 

“Maria!” Clint is yelling for her. He sounds desperate, a man who’s lost too many people.

“I’m okay!” She isn’t. She can feel something is different, the nausea is gone. She doesn’t feel the fear that had plagued her moments ago. Her heart doesn’t pull for Clint at the sound of his distress. For the first time since Natasha died, she doesn’t feel incomplete. She doesn’t feel like she’s missing any pieces. She doesn’t feel like she has any pieces left.

Clint’s hands steady her, turning her around his eyes widen. “You said you were okay.” He’s come to be caring and kind towards her. Recently, it’s warmed her heart. Even though they’ve been in each others lives for years, only in the past months has she really bonded with Clint. That’s gone too. She doesn’t feel warmed by his worry. She doesn’t feel anything. She can’t even feel the panic she knows should be gripping her.

It wasted no time on taking her soul then.

She hadn’t anticipated to be unfeeling after the deal. 

“I am, it’s just a scratch.” She’s gruff, like she was in the early days. Like she is to anyone who wasn’t in her circle. She hasn’t been like that towards Clint in a long time.

“That’s not just a scratch.”

“Dad!” Lila’s shout sends them both downstairs. She sounds like Barton had moments ago. Terrified, an inhuman fear. A fear born from the Blip. “Dad, am I hallucinating?” Her finger is raised, pointing to the distance. It’s still raining in a thick downpour but there’s no mistaking what she’s seeing.

“Tasha.” Barton’s voice is one of reverence. She can see the disbelief and awe on his expression. Laura’s hand is covering her mouth, shock and so much happiness. Her eyes crinkle at the edges, joy indented in the lines. 

Natasha has an arm around Stark, both awkwardly walking towards them. Stark is in his suit, a beacon of red in a drowning storm. They must realize where they are. They’re heading to the porch and know the area even through the storm. Maria sees when they really notice though. Natasha’s eyes met hers and she fumbles with Stark’s arm. It’s completely out of character. It’s not something the Natasha in her memories would ever do. 

She has to remember, she isn’t that Natasha.

This is a Natasha forged through five years of mourning, shaped by those missing from the universe. This is a Natasha who had died. She wonders if the creature changed her. Maria was stupid, she should have been clearer about her demands. It could have done anything with the spaces in their agreement. 

Natasha moves out of Stark’s embrace and sprints towards the porch, cautionless of the slick mud . She skips the steps and leaps at Maria, wrapping her in an embrace they’ve been in hundreds of times. One that always made Maria fall deeper in love. “Hey you.” Natasha murmurs into her neck, she isn’t pulling back to talk to her. It gives Maria time, a moment, to pull herself together.

She can’t feel the same comfort from this embrace that she used to. She doesn’t even feel the love for Natasha that she once had. She remembers. She wonders if it let her remember to torture her or to help her. Probably the former. 

She remembers loving Natasha, mourning her, being willing to lose her soul for her. She has to apply it. Use her memory to act as if it’s all fine. Memory can become emotion if she tries hard enough.

Keep it together, Hill. 

“You’re like a drowned cat.” Maria teases, brushing Natasha’s hair away from her face.

“You’re here.” Natasha’s hand flexes and releases. She looks uneasy, unearthed by her own emotional upheaval. Finally, Natasha tugs her forward. Her lips are cold from the weather, dampened by rain, but still soft. So very soft. Natasha’s fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of Maria’s neck. 

Her hair is short, shorter than she’s ever kept it while Natasha has known her. She had let it grow out during her worst mourning period, too distracted to cut it. 

When she came to the Bartons’, Lila made fun of her hair and offered to cut it. She’d never seen Maria’s hair grow out and Maria could tell it worried her. She cut it shorter than Maria kept it and then proceeded to panic. Maria had set her down and reassured her. She appreciated Lila’s worry and care, she liked the change. 

“You’re here.” 

“You already said that Romanoff. Careful, I might have to replace you for someone with more vocabulary.” 

“Ass.” Despite her words, Natasha’s head knocks back against her shoulder.

“Not to be a mood killer but how are you two here?” Clint asks. He’s gripping Stark’s shoulder, a comforting gesture. His eyes are misty and he looks at Stark like a returned brother is standing on his porch. She guesses one did.

“I heard you thought purple is in fashion. Death can’t keep me away from that.” Stark pulls at Barton’s shirt which is indeed purple, his face is scrunched with disgust.

“I remember falling.”

“You mean jumping.” Clint’s words are sharp. Maria knows she would have taken Clint’s side before, so she does. She can’t let them know the truth. She knows Natasha will want to undo it and Maria can’t let that happen. She made her choice, she’ll stick by it.

Maria stiffens, opens her mouth to lecture Natasha, Natasha intercepts her and soothes her. Her hand runs down Maria’s back in a relaxing gesture, her lips perk up in an abashed smile. “I had to get you back.”

“Back to a world without you?”

“There is no world without you.” Natasha rests her forehead against Maria’s.

“How’s the kid?” Stark asks Clint.

“Morgan or Peter?” 

Stark's answering smile is soft, tired but soft. “Yeah.”

“They’re as good as can be expected. They miss you.” 

“Well, let's hit the road.” Stark claps his hands together.

“We’re leaving?” Natasha pulls back but leans against Maria. It’s more intimacy than Natasha’s ever shown outside of their apartment. She supposes that five years will do that to a person.

“We got a mystery to ignore and a family to reunite.”

“I’ll text everyone.” Barton pulls out his phone. Maria’s phone buzzes, he must have texted the group chat. “Let’s go.” 

“Can we come?” Cooper asks his dad.

“Laura?”

“Yeah, we’ll all go. So long as that’s okay with you.” Laura directs the second part at Stark.

“More the merrier.”

Natasha doesn’t leave her side during the flight, or when they land, and only briefly to hug those who gathered. Potts and Stark’s reunion is emotional but his reunion with Morgan is even more so. 

“How are you back?” Potts’ looks disbelieving, like Stark might disappear if she looks away.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” 

Natasha scoffs and shifts to press the matter. Maria curls her hand around Natasha’s hip, drawing her back into her. Keeping her away from pursuing the matter. She presses a kiss into the crown of Natasha’s head and feels her settle into her chest. 

“Dad.” Morgan’s voice is solemn and Stark looks towards her immediately. “We got a cat.”

“No.” He acts surprised and offended quicker than Maria thought he could. He’s a good father. 

“I missed you.” Natasha’s playing with Maria’s fingers when she says it.

“You just missed having someone clean the litter box.” 

“Not true. I also missed having someone make me coffee.” Maria knocks her head against Natasha’s. Natasha laughs and the others shoot her an odd look. Relief, perhaps. 

She takes Natasha home. 

Natasha drops to her knees and scratches at Liho’s fur. Cooper had the foresight to bring Liho with them. Natasha’s eyes are misty and the day looks to be catching up to her. “I missed this damned cat.” At Maria’s questioning look, Natasha clarifies. “Lost Liho too.” Natasha looks away and her back stiffens. 

She’s putting up walls, trying to gather herself. Maria knows Natasha is at her most vulnerable. Before, Maria would have kicked down the walls Natasha put between. Maria got good at reading Natasha’s moods during their relationship. She could differentiate when Natasha’s walls needed to be respected and when they need to be torn down. Natasha sometimes can’t let herself be vulnerable, she needs Maria to fight for it. 

She can’t do it.

She can’t fake it through an emotional talk while Natasha tries to control herself. She goes to the kitchen to make some food instead.

It’s the first time.

The first sign that something isn’t right. 

She didn’t think Natasha would notice, or at least that it would take her longer. Maria thought she’d be too caught up in being alive, in the return of half the universe, Maria’s return, that she wouldn’t notice. Maria is right, for a bit. Not for long.

Natasha will sometimes look at her like she’d look at a mark, sizing her up and seeing something off. She never asks though, her attention is always diverted. Maria tries to do what she would have done before but it’s not that easy. There’s no easy guide to humans.

Memories aren’t emotions. 

It blows up in her face spectacularly. 

They’re back together for a few months before it really starts going downhill. Natasha’s questioning gaze gets sharper, hotter. She isn’t dissuaded as easily. 

Then she asks. 

“I can’t believe you left Tony alone when he was like that.” Natasha’s angry, angrier than Maria has seen her since getting her back. Maria had left Tony in the midst of a panic attack. She didn’t want to be near someone in turmoil when she couldn’t help them. There are others who could do better, others who know what they are doing. “You never would have done that.” The before goes unsaid but Maria hears it.

She makes the biggest mistake of her life. “I didn’t notice.” Natasha looks even more furious, the rage practically crawling out of her eyes. 

“Since when did you start lying to me?” She shouldn’t have tried to lie to Natasha. Not even Fury can get away with it.

“Nat. Let’s just sleep this off.” 

“No! It’s been months. I thought maybe you needed some time to get over me dying or maybe your death but that’s not it. Something’s different.” Natasha pauses, slowing her breathing. Giving Maria an opportunity to say something. She isn’t sure what Natasha wants to hear. “Maria, please, what’s wrong?” She sounds less angry now, just worried and sad. 

“There’s nothing wrong.” 

“Stop lying to me. If you don’t want to tell me fine but don’t lie to me.” 

“I don’t want to tell you.” 

“You’ve never been this stubborn.”

“I thought you loved my stubbornness.”

“Not when it makes my wife into a drone.” Natasha looks tired, she slumps against the wall. “I don’t know what to do. Something’s different but you won’t talk to me.” 

“What do you want?”

“For you to talk to me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” 

“I don’t want to.”

“Want or can’t Maria? They’re very different things.”

“Want.” 

“You can’t put aside your want for this?”

“No.”

“Maria.” The anger is back, the softness fading with her exasperation. “This is frustrating. We aren’t the same as before. Whatever you’re not saying hangs between us whenever we are together.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be together.” The words are out before she can stop them. It’s smart, there’s no way Natasha will figure out the truth if they’re not together. It protects the deal. Natasha freezes, her body locking up before she pulls on a mask even Maria hasn’t seen yet.

“You’re not serious.” She states it. It should be a question because Maria’s face doesn’t falter. She doesn’t take her words back. “Are you breaking up with me Hill?” Her voice is icy and Maria can see the walls being built between them.

“I think it’s for the best.” Natasha nods, once, then twice, and leaves with a violent quick turn. 

“I hope your secrets are worth it.” 

Maria wraps her hand around the mug of coffee Natasha had made her. The warmth buzzes across her palms in the cold apartment. Staring where Natasha had been, she knows its worth it. If she lives, it’ll always be worth it.


	3. We’re Back Yet So Far Apart

She stops hearing from most everyone over the next few days. Potts still texts her, their relationship exists outside of the Avengers by now. The Avengers all but freeze her out.

She isn’t surprised to come home and find Clint in her living room. 

Clint is a different man than he was. She doesn’t know if it’s because of Loki’s violation of his mind or losing his family. She thinks it’s a domino. The events fueling one another. A terrible childhood the kindle of his life, the foundation for the building bonfire, he was built to burn and rage. 

He doesn’t wait to explode. 

“She mourned you for five years! Five. Years. She never forgot you. She kept your fucking picture on her desk.” He’s dangerously close. His words in her space, his heat on her skin. Rage spilling out onto her shoes. “You were a wreck. You fell apart in a way I never thought you could. Now you want to tell me you’ve what, fallen out of love with her? Years together and apart. Years of love and now that she’s back you’re just not feeling it?” She can’t very well tell him that’s the crux of the issue. She doesn’t feel it. She can’t. She can only cling onto the memory, the loved and not the love.

She can’t tell him any of it.

She wakes up every day because she has to. She works because it’s what she’s supposed to do. She breathes because her body demands oxygen. She functions.

All she does is function.

She doesn’t feel sorrow for the end of the most important relationship of her life. She doesn’t feel guilt for her actions. She doesn’t feel love for any of the people she is surrounded by. She doesn’t feel fear as Clint’s rage is at the forefront. She doesn’t fear death. Killing her wouldn’t change anything. 

“I can’t fake a feeling I don’t have anymore.” It’s true but it’s not how Clint will take it. 

“She’s right. There’s something wrong with you.” It isn’t an accusation, it’s worry. It’s odd how quick he alternates between emotions. Natasha isn’t his only friend. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Bullshit.” He pulls her into a hug and sighs. “I don’t know what’s happening but I will. You two are family.” He lets her go and leaves.

Just as quick as they all froze her out, they bring her back in. Natasha and her don’t talk. Even when they all hang out they avoid each other. Natasha’s mask is always in place near her. She’s unreadable for the first time in years. Sometimes Maria thinks she sees anger, sometimes sadness, but she isn’t sure. 

They don’t divorce. Maria doesn’t question it and Natasha doesn’t talk to her long enough to clarify. They were married in Prague, just the two of them and an eccentric American who’d been ordained. She remembers it was the best day of her life.

The next time she messes up, it takes the place as her biggest mistake. She should have been smarter. She underestimates Clint. 

They’re at the beach for Morgan’s birthday. She’s talking with Nebula, who she finds one of the easiest people to talk with, when Clint picks her up. The group’s attention shifts to them but none come to help her, the traitors. He carries her over to the ocean and dumps her in. She emerges and drags him under the tide.

“You shit!” She hadn’t wanted to get wet and had said as much. She had been fine with her time on the beach. 

“You should have seen your face.” Clint’s laughing his ass off. He looks infinitely younger, like he had before Thanos. Before Loki. The smartass agent who gave her a headache.

“Whoa, never took you for a rebel.” Rogers says from behind them. Most have congregated over, probably expecting Clint to get murdered. 

“She’s very rebel. Watch as she drowns her own agent in front of children.” 

“You including yourself in that Barton?”

“Always.”

“She’s the least rebel person I know. She once made me sign papers to access the paperwork I was required to sign.” Stark complains.

“Tattoos aren’t exactly rebel anymore Steve.” Wilson teases Rogers, an elbow delivered with a soft smile. 

“That one is.” Gamora’s eyes dig into her with knowing. She looks offset, like she isn’t sure it’s her place to say. 

“Damn, didn’t think you had it in you. Terrans are giving the rest of us a bad name.” The raccoon agrees with Gamora.

“Share with the class?” Stark asks. 

“It’s not our right.” Gamora hesitantly answers. She still seems torn, unsure what the right choice is. She’s usually a blunt person but she’s tempered her more rash remarks after hurting Quill one too many times. 

“It is our right. It’s the right of anyone who cares for her.” Nebula argues. She looks angry, disappointed. “That’s Kalak’s mark.” She gestures to Maria’s back, she isn’t sure what they’re talking about considering she can’t very easily look at her own back. The water is making her shirt transparent allowing them to see whatever it is. 

“Ominous.” Quill mumbles.

“What’s Kalak’s mark?” Natasha asks Nebula. She hasn’t spoken up yet, barely made her presence known. Natasha always goes unseen until she wants to be. 

“Nebula.” Maria warns Nebula, perhaps she is pleading, she isn’t sure. She just knows the secret must be kept. The deal can’t be in danger, it can’t be broken. 

“It’s a deal making creature. One of a kind.” Gamora answers.

“Never dealt with Terrans before, at least no reported cases.” Rocket scratches his chin with interest.

“Kalak’s like a genie?” Parker asks Nebula and Gamora.

“More like a crossroads demon.” Quill looks proud of Gamora for her human reference. “It will make a deal but the cost is too high. That’s why it only ever appears to those it knows will accept the deal.”

“What’s the cost?” Natasha presses.

“Nat-”

“Don’t.”

“Your soul.” Rocket answers and Parker snorts.

“Wait, are you not kidding?” Parker swallows down his amusement. Horror fills the air where his laughter once was.

“He’s not. The price is always a soul in exchange for the deal.”

“What were you willing to trade your soul for?” Stark asks as Clints mutters under his breath. “Haven’t we had enough of soul exchanges.” 

“Maria.” Natasha’s mask is gone but Maria wishes it was still up. She looks horrified, heartbroken. She can see that Natasha immediately put it together. There’s only one thing she’d ever betray her entire training for. Only one thing she’d ravage herself for. It’s always Natasha. 

_“Losing you.”_

There’s a reason it is her greatest fear. She was at her most vulnerable when she told Natasha that because it is the most honest she’s ever been in her life. It’s the most honest she’ll ever be. 

“You didn’t.” Natasha’s voice is disbelieving. Maria wonders how many times she’ll break Natasha’s heart. She’s been entrusted to protect it but all she manages to do is try to catch it as it slips. Too tight of squeezes as it falls. Is this when it finally hits the floor? Was it when she broke up with Natasha? Does she still hold Natasha’s heart, or has she been fooling herself? Maybe, she’s just coated in the fleshy remains.

Maria offers her a weak smile. 

“You gave your soul to some space genie for us.” Stark sounds distant, like he’s not in his body. Potts gives him a worried look. Stark hasn’t been the same either. 

“I can’t believe you would do something so stupid.” Natasha scowls.

“Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing.” Maria fires back.

“I absolutely wouldn’t have. I would have tortured it until it brought you back to me.” Her grin is sharp and perfectly plastered. It’s a fake act but it isn’t the mask Maria has been treated to since their breakup. 

“Natasha.” Maria rubs at her shoulder. 

Natasha’s predatory grin falls and a wistful look takes its place. “You haven’t done that since I came back.” 

“What?”

“You always do that when I irritate you. You haven’t done it since we came back.”

“You haven’t irritated me until now.”

“Not even when you dumped me?” 

Clint coughs behind her. “Not your best move Maria.”

“How are we getting Maria her soul back?” Rogers asks Gamora. Maria can hardly be surprised, it’s such a him thing to say. Captain America, ready to act. 

“You can’t summon Kalak.”

“We hunt him down then.” Thor adds. He’s so easy going most of the time Maria forgets his bloody history as a warrior. It shows now in the violent excited gleam, the eagerness to hurt those who hurt his. 

“I agree with that. Kalak’s always been a slimy creature.” Valkyrie says with a similar gleam. 

“It’s not that easy. It only comes when it’s ready to make a deal.” Rocket cuts in. “I’ll reach out. I know some people.”

“You know people who know a demon alien?” Quill whispers loudly. His eyebrows shot up as if both impressed and distrurbed.

“Don’t be an idiot. Kalak isn’t a demon alien.” Rocket fires back with a self satisfied expression.

“We need to talk privately.” Natasha tells Maria. Her eyes are heavy and Maria’s breathing shudders. She doesn’t really want to talk to Natasha alone, there’s too much there. She knows she owes it to her, she knows it’s something she would have done before. 

She nods and walks out of the water, falling into stride next to Natasha. She’s bracing herself for Natasha’s inevitable yelling when Stark grabs her arm loosely. Natasha pauses ahead of them, looking away in a semblance of privacy. However, she isn’t giving Maria a chance to slip away and therefore is close enough to hear them.

Stark’s face flickers between an array of emotions before he settles on one. “I get to hold my kids again because of you. I will always owe you for that.” She sees Natasha work her jaw before departing, apparently deciding Stark’s privacy is more important right now.

“You don’t owe me anything, Stark.”

“Tony.”

“Tony.”

Natasha is waiting at the Jeep. She’s leaning against the door of the Jeep with her sunglasses in place, making it hard to read her expression. Maria can see her body language well enough. It’s angry, it’s sad. She isn’t sure what Natasha she’s going to face but she knows it won’t be smooth sailing. 

“You gave your soul for me.” 

“I did.”

Natasha reaches out, trailing her fingers across the wet collar of Maria’s shoulder. “Why?” 

“There’s no world without you in it.”

Natasha’s eyes blur with wetness, she bites her lip and looks away. “I miss you.” Present tense, like she knows Maria still isn’t here. She does know, now. 

Maria’s body and Maria’s memories are here but no matter how much she claws at any semblance of feeling she can’t grasp onto it. It’s beyond her now, just out of reach. At the beginning, she’d held onto Natasha, clinging desperately to the memory of warmth. She realized after not too long that no matter how hard she held on, she wouldn’t feel it.

“I missed you.” 

Natasha grips the back of her neck, thumb tracing over the side of her neck. “I’ll bring you back. I swear Maria, I’ll get you back.”

“Don’t endanger the deal Natasha.”

“If you can’t feel then why are you so scared?”

“I can’t let the deal be broken.”

“Why is that? If you can’t feel, why do you care so much about the deal? About me? Kalak programmed you.” Natasha’s words are like a bucket of cold water. It’s true. 

She shouldn’t care but she does. She’s been protective and secretive of the deal the whole time. Natasha feels when her pulse jumps and smiles at her. Her thumb grazes over her jawline, a slow reassuring movement. Meant to comfort the panic at the realization. She’s played into its hands since the beginning. She’s continued to play to its tune, the puppet too stupid to see its strings.

She hasn’t felt real panic since the deal was made. It comes back with a vengeance. It bursts from her lungs, hammers against her chest. “ _Mi alma_ , breathe.” She should have made more guidelines, made the deal more clear. In her desperation to see Natasha, she overlooked the most important rule of dealing with beings like Kalak. Always be clear.

She really can’t breathe now. The oxygen has been sucked from her body. It took her soul, it took her feeling. Not all. It left her with her memories, with the ability to miss them. It left her with this all consuming panic. She doesn’t know if it’s been laying dormant waiting to be triggered by discovering the truth or if it’s always been there. She can’t fucking breathe. She’s going to die here. 

She’s going to die. She can’t stop thinking about it, her chest burns with aborted breaths. Is she afraid of death? Did Kalak leave her capable of fearing death? She didn’t fear it when Clint looked a breath away from snapping her neck. Was trying because she knew he wouldn’t?

She doesn’t want to die. She doesn't want to give Kalak that satisfaction. She doesn’t want to take more from Natasha. She isn’t sure if that counts as really fearing death. She just knows she can’t hurt Natasha.

Natasha, who’s pressed so closely to Maria. Natasha, who falls with Maria onto the asphalt. The loose gravel digs into Maria’s flesh. Natasha keep murmuring comforting words, ordering her to breathe, counting a pattern to follow. She’s pressed so close to Maria they’re breathing in the same air. Maria wouldn’t be surprised if Natasha were trying to breathe life back into her.

The loose gravel is red hot from exposure to the sun. Maria presses harder into it just as she had with her ring. The pain and Natasha slows her hitched breathing. The fuzziness fades from her mind minutely. She presses her face closer to Natasha’s, cheek against cheek, noses wedged against each other.

“What if there’s no me to bring back? What if this is it?” It’s scratchy and quiet since her chest still burns, Natasha still hears her. Natasha tugs her somehow even closer. She drags Maria into her lap and exhales her own shaky breath. 

“I won’t accept that. Kalak will give you up or I will break it.”

The venom in Natasha’s voice seals the oath. Maria isn’t sure what’ll be left of her by the time Natasha ends Kalak. Maria hopes it’ll be enough. One thing she does know, Natasha will find it.


	4. I Can’t Stand Losing You

Finding a being that doesn’t want to be found turns out harder than they were expecting. The Guardians had expected it but none of the earthbound heroes wanted to believe it. She’s surprised at how quick they all are to help. She shouldn’t be. She should give credit where it’s due. The team, teams now, have become a patchwork family. Apparently, this extends to her. It may just be because of Natasha.

Natasha rarely lets Maria out of her sight now. Natasha doesn’t ask anything of her, she’s just present. Maria doesn’t send her away. She sees no need to. She broke up with her to protect the deal, because of Kalak, she has no reason to keep her distance now. They don’t kiss but they’re always touching. 

She knows it’s hard for Natasha. Natasha sees her wife, someone she’s known and loved for years. Logically, Maria knows she’s still Maria. She also knows she isn’t. She wears the same face, has the same body, even thinks similarly, but it isn’t the same. There’s a hole where she should be.

She doesn’t panic often, even that is a distant feeling, but she can panic. Thinking about how she isn’t really Maria is a sure fire way to get herself into a panic. 

Tony slides his yellow chip into place, the rows nearly full. “I’ll win.” He’s boasting because he has the most slots primed, if she places one it’ll set him up with four in a row. He doesn’t have every slot primed.

“I shouldn’t brutalize you in front of Morgan like this.” She slides her piece into her fourth spot. His jaw twitches.

“I despise you, agent.” 

“Cry me a river.”

He empties the rack and slides her red pieces over. “I’m touched you’re using Iron Man colors. If you think about it, I’m really winning.” 

“I’m not using Iron Man colors.” She lifts the leg of her pants to show off her Black Widow socks where the red is obvious.

“You’re wearing Black Widow socks.” Natasha murmurs from next to Maria. She’s been silently reading beside Maria all afternoon. 

She wishes she could work but apparently missing a soul is reason for Fury to sideline her.

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Uh oh, dad knows that look sweetie and it’s nothing we need to see.” Tony picks Morgan up and dramatically swings her around in the air. 

“Dad!” She squeals holding onto his ears when he sets her on his shoulders.

“Let’s get lunch while those two look at each other like a bunch of saps.”

“You look at mommy like that.” 

“I can’t believe my own daughter is exposing me like this.” They wander down the hall and Natasha is still staring at the socks.

“I hate those socks.”

“I know.”

“Why are you wearing them then?”

“Because they annoy you. You get the cutest expression.” 

Her eyes raise and meet Maria’s, the heat behind them scorches Maria. Teasing the world’s deadliest assassin might not have been her best idea. Natasha presses her hand to Maria’s thigh. She doesn’t lean in to kiss her. She doesn’t anymore. 

Maria knows Natasha’s issues with control and lack thereof. It seems likely to Maria that Natasha doesn’t want to kiss her because she sees it as a violation. That Maria without her soul can’t consent the same as Maria with her soul could. Rather, it may be because Natasha doesn’t even see her as Maria. She sees her as the shell in need of protection, the bones that will once again house her wife. Maria isn’t sure. She doesn’t press.

She can see it’s hard for Natasha at times. Maria will make a quip like she did before, or she’ll wear something Natasha likes, and Natasha will move to kiss her on instinct. Only she has to stop herself. 

“You can still find me cute?” It’s harsh. It doesn’t offend her because nothing can but it does trigger waves of panic. The same thoughts that always stir that panic. Can she? Did she actually do it to see Natasha’s expression or because it’s something she would have done before? “I’m sorry.” Natasha is quick to apologize.

Natasha has been amazing, she could recognize that. She’s been hunting Kalak with an unflinching focus. She’s been patient and understanding with Maria. 

Patience only goes so far. 

Her phone goes off and she picks it up. She silences the call and sets it back down. Another thing she doesn’t want to put up with.

“Your mother?” Natasha’s voice is devoid of any emotion. Maria knows that she’s just covering her disapproval.

“Yes.” Maria doesn’t want to argue. She’s tired of the tension that exists. Often they can just sit together and they’ll be fine. Not always. Not when she reminds Natasha of how it used to be. Not when her mother calls her.

Her mother didn’t disappear but Maria and her two sisters did. Her mother was left without her family. Natasha reached out to her mother. They built a relationship during those five years, a connection formed of dust. They weren’t really close before. They’d met but Maria didn’t even have time for her family let alone Natasha. It seems Natasha made time.

The tension builds and Maria wants to crawl out of her skin. “I’m going to shower.”

She gets up and goes to their room, leaving Natasha behind. As much as she can frustrate Natasha, she frustrates Maria. Constantly not being enough for Natasha, or any of her friends at that, is wearing on her.

She takes off her clothes and starts the shower, waiting for it to heat. She checks her connections and ongoing searches on Kalak. Her friends are all searching but she’s not one to be idle. She’s no damsel.

Besides, she isn’t searching the same threads of information as them.

She hops in the shower and runs her hands through her cropped hair. She wants to scream. She doesn’t know what the point of her days is. She has no purpose and it’s causing her to go mad. Day in and day out she does nothing. Nothing except watch Natasha lose her.

She doesn’t go back out to Natasha. She should. She knows it’ll worry Natasha if Maria is gone too long. She doesn’t go back.

Instead, she goes for a run to clear her head.

Natasha isn’t in the common room when she gets back. She heads to their room and doesn’t find her there either. She changes out of her sweaty work out clothes and throws on jeans and a hoodie. It’s not something she usually wears, that’s why she choses it.

She heads to their operation room, the center of Kalak research. All that she finds there is the hum of machinery and mounds of research. A lot of research is online, sent by the Guardians or discovered by the Avengers.

There’s a lot of physical research as well. 

Book, scrolls, anything about deal giving entities that could be Kalak. She starts going through some of it, trying to see if they found anything she could use. She’s found answers with her own research but she doesn’t have them all. 

It’s as she’s going through a tome that she accidentally pushes it off the table. It almost breaks her toes, or itself rather, when she catches it. It’s some sort of stone with carvings. She can’t read the language. She looks but no one has translated it yet.

She starts up a deciphering program and starts translating it. It’s not a stone found on earth, it’s too...alien for that. There’s something off about it, something definitely not human. 

The program finishes with a ding. 

**Only the chosen may see.**

Maria figures that’s her. Kalak did choose her, apparently her sorrow was loud enough that he targeted her out of billions.

She doesn’t see anything obvious. She twists and turns, runs her finger over it, to no avail. She doesn’t see a hidden message.

She sighs heavily and something changes. Particles she couldn’t see shift and vibrate. She blows intentionally this time and it shifts further. Uncovering an image of Kalak. The robed figure points downwards so she blows there.

Her breath hitches at the message and she tucks the tablet under her hoodie. She turns and leave, mind buzzing.

She can’t do this here. Here in this facility that still seems foreign to her. Clinical and ill at ease. She’s used to the helicarrier, Shield bases, Natasha and her apartment. She knows where she needs to go.

Nothing’s changed when she gets there. She’s let in with no hassle, which she’s thankful for. She sets the tablet on the kitchen counter and pulls her knife out of her boot.

**Open the mark to beckon Fate.**

She thinks it’s a bit pretentious of Kalak to think of itself as fate but she understands the message.

She remembers at the beach they called the odd inking on her back Kalak’s mark. This must be what the tablet means.

She takes off her hoodie and sets it aside, flipping her knife open a moment later. She has to awkwardly bend her arm to get the knife around her back. She brings it down across the mark, through her skin. Blood is quick to bloom. Nothing happens, Kalak does not appear. “Fuck me.” The answer is on this tablet. She could fix it, or at least try. She could do something other than hurt Natasha. 

“Open the mark. Open the mark.” She keeps repeating it, aggressively pacing across the carpet. This is the first room Natasha and Maria lived in together. Maria had moved into Natasha’s room at Stark tower all those years ago. 

It seems like the right place to do it, to try and come back to Natasha. In this place where so many of their memories lie. 

She can remember causing the stain near the couch and Natasha’s anger. 

_She’s cleaning her handguns when Natasha walks in the room. It’s the first time Maria sees her in real casual clothes. Natasha is wearing a loose tee and yoga pants. Maria has a moment and forgets her coordination, spilling oil all over the carpet. It really isn’t her fault._

_Natasha isn’t hearing it. “You’re here one week and you already stain my carpet?” There’s real anger in Natasha’s voice. She opened up by letting Maria move in. It is a big step for them. It’s still too ridiculous for Maria when Natasha walks over silently fuming._

_“You walk out like that and you don’t expect a few stains?” Maria already put a rag over the oil, soaking it up before too much damage could be done. She reaches out and wraps her fingers around Natasha’s knees, dragging her down to her lap. “Don’t be angry.” She presses light kisses across Natasha’s face who fights to keep her angry expression._

_“I will report you Commander Hill!” Natasha’s laughing by now, palm pressing Maria’s face away. Maria’s long hair falls out of her ponytail and Natasha brushes a piece back behind her ear, fingers brushing against her face._

Her face. She rushes into the bathroom and leans against the counter. The scar is still there. She forgets about it a lot of the time. It’s sort of out of the way even though it’s on her face. It runs along the side of her face, from her ear to her jaw. 

She clenches once more, ignoring the still bleeding wound on her back, and places the knife to the scar. She cuts through the flesh with the ease of a trained killer. It’s a sharp pain, even sharper than her back. Face wounds always hurt, always bleed.

The blood steadily drops across the white marble sink counter. Drops become puddles. That’s not where her attention is.

The wound looks like she’s opening a mask. Opening a portal to her very self. She could cut the rest of the way and be rid of her face but what would lie beneath? The real Maria? The fake Maria? Is there a difference or are they the same person? The bloodied line offers the answers if she’s brave enough. All she has to do is keep cutting, pry it off.

Her fingers are already looping beneath the open flap of skin when the steam interrupts her. Steam coming off the blood. 

Just like before. 

“You called.” Kalak’s voices come from the corner of the room. She looks in the mirror and sees nothing. 

“I’d like to renegotiate.” 

She hears banging on the bathroom door and looks at it. “What are you doing?”

“Your friends are quite determined to save you. You don’t need saving.” This time, when the voices are behind her, she turns. 

“They found the tablet.”

“Of course.”

“They left it out.” She feels dumb in hindsight. It was too easy.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You needed to call me of your own free will.”

“Why?”

“It’s so much more delicious when you give yourself over to me.” She tries to not let it see how much that disturbs her. 

“I want my soul back.”

“You’re all the same.”

“We’re renegotiating.” She’s negotiated worse deals. She’s stopped terrorist cells and militias. She’s saved the world. She’s done being underestimated by creepy aliens because she dared to love with all her heart. 

“Kalak isn’t your name.” The creature recoils harshly, dozens of hisses explode. “You’re right. They are determined. But they aren’t me. I’ve planned more tactical assaults, ambushes, and any other kind of mission you can think of. I’m the planner. I’m the researcher. They’re geniuses. They can build, fly, and create in ways I’ll never manage.” She leans forward, into Kalak’s space. Chills travel her spine and her heart wants to stop but she doesn’t back down. “You forgot the most important part.”

“Which is?”

“I am amazing at paperwork.” It moves to lunge at her but her knife is pressed into the robe. Not deep enough to harm but deep enough to warn. “You’ve built a reputation as an interdimensional being. Celestial, supernatural. You’re not. You’re just the last of your kind. You’re killable.” She presses deeper and viscous black sludge drools onto the blade.

“What is it you wish for?”

“You’re no genie. Besides this is about what you want.”

Kalak’s rolling movements cease. “I want nothing.”

“All creatures desire to live.”

“You kill me, you kill your soul.”

“I’m incredibly petty. Stubborn too. So long as you die, what do I care?” The banging on the door redoubles, she can almost feel Natasha and the rest on the other side. Always trying to help, always trying to save.

“You can’t leave until negotiations are concluded, I gathered that much. We both must come to an agreement. My terms are simple. Give me my soul back and never make another deal and you live. Otherwise, you die.” 

The knife is inside it now, shallow but likely painful. “You misunderstand me.”

“How so?”

“If you kill me, you kill your soul.” It leans closer to her, wet sloshing sounds make her grit her teeth. It doesn’t smell, it’s almost like an absence of smell. “Her.”

She almost buries the knife in him on principle. “Do not threaten her.” 

“You’re not enough Maria.” She almost drops her knife, her face pales. It’s voice takes a deeper accented male voice. A voice she knows well. Her father’s voice. “She can’t love you as you are. If you kill me, you kill any chance of her happiness.”

“Then so be it.” It made a fatal error. It took her ability to love Natasha away. She acts out of routine and obligation but she’s a ghost of Maria. She does not fear her father’s voice the same as she would have if Kalak hadn’t taken her fear away. She wouldn’t be so certain of killing it if Kalak hadn’t taken her love and empathy away. It made its own killer.

Just as sure as she was when she traded her soul for Natasha, she is sure now.

She has no hesitation and no deviation from her course of action.

Her soul or death.

Kalak’s figure shudders, moving back from Maria. She follows, keeping the knife embedded.

Kalak is an alien and the last of its kind. It wants to live, all creatures do. That’s what she’s betting on. The will to live. She hopes it’s stronger than the desire of deals, of suffering and death. 

“We’ve a deal.” She feels something wet tear across her face. A horizontal line through the preexisting scar.

Just as before, it’s done in an instant. She feels her soul return as quickly as it left. She never thought she’d know what a soul feels like, how violent it’s absence could be. It all rushes to her. All the feeling she’s been missing. Seeing Natasha again, losing her in a new way, the agony of a numb existence. The split of who she is. That isn’t instant.

She doesn’t become Maria again the moment her soul is back and it terrifies her. She still feels fake, hollow. She doesn’t know who she is, even if she can feel her despair. She just knows she needs to hold Natasha. Needs to really kiss her wife, feel the love that exists between them. 

She needs emotion instead of memory.

It starts fading as soon as the deal is made and she thrusts her wrist forward. 

The knife slides into place, like a lover returning from war.

She hadn’t set out to kill it. Living in the ruins of who she was, is, and will be, she wants it’s death. She wants to bring fate to its knees. She wants to feel fate’s last breath against her and rebel. Rebel against the being so arrogant it stripped her of her very essence.

It wrecked her mind so she’ll butcher it.

It makes a distorted low pitch sound. It echoes and rebounds through its voices. She pushes harder, pushes it’s entire body until they’re pressed against the wall. Black sludge covers the knife and her hand. Hundreds of things seize beneath the robe, some lashing out at her. She doesn’t know what they are, she just presses harder until even the handle burrows it’s way in.

It doesn’t say anything but she feels it’s gaze staring into her. 

She stands bloodied as the killer of the last of the Kalaks, a now extinct species. 

The energy seeps from the room, the electricity stops tingling at her fingers. 

“Maria?” She can finally hear them on the other side of the door. It’s Natasha of course. She sounds worried, angry, soft, hard. She fits the whole spectrum of human emotion in Maria’s name.

The seizing stops, the multi-chambered breathing slows. The hood remains upright, staring at her. 

She reaches out and grabs it.

“Maria, don’t!”

She pulls it back after a moment of hesitation. 

All she sees is madness.


	5. Maybe You Don’t Lose Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading and commenting, here’s the last chapter/epilogue

_Her body flinches with the recoil, hands thrumming. The gloves protect her palms from the rough texture of the grip. She uses fingerless gloves, to Fury’s consternation, because she needs to feel the trigger. She needs to feel the resistance, the decision to kill._

_Her shoulders rock back with each pull of the trigger. Her muscles are sore after hours of PT and now shooting. She feels it necessary._

_She’s been inactive for too long. She’s been sitting at her desk doing paperwork and organizing agents. It’s important work. She knows it is. She’s proud of how far she’s come in such a short amount of time. Deputy Director isn’t a shabby position._

_Still, it left her rustier than she cares to admit. The last mission proved that._

_She’d actually joined the assault. Agent Morse had been missing for a week. Considering Maria’s personal stake in her safe return, she made it clear to Fury she was going in._

_She had Morse’s arm thrown around her shoulders as Maria dragged them out when it happened. Her reaction time was just a second too slow. One moment she’s managing a one handed reload in an empty hallway and the next he’s there. Rifle pointed at her head, finger itching to end her life._

_Her reaction time might be slow but she isn’t an amateur. She could have killed him before he shot, she could have managed just fine. It just would have been a close one._

_Until she got involved._

_He went down in a flash of red. Red hair, red blood, the red of a black widow._

_“Getting slow, Maria?” Agent Romanoff gave her an infuriating grin. Romanoff doesn’t hide that she’s accessed Maria’s files, as much as she could that is. Her blatant show of disrespect is likely to test her. To test if she’s like her old handlers. She didn’t lash out at Romanoff but she let her next few breaths burn with rage. Rage at her wounded pride and rage at the agent bent on annoying her._

_“It’s Deputy Director.”_ She won’t lash out but she’ll be damned if she goes down without a fight.

_“How prestigious.” The way Romanoff’s mouth twists around the word would make her blush if she were a different woman. As it is, she raises an unimpressed brow at Romanoff’s blatant attempt to flirt._

_“Dying back there might have been better.” Morse moans against Maria’s shoulder. Maria tightens her grip around Morse’s arm, a fierce protectiveness sweeps through her. Maria has few real friends. It rarely bothers her, it’s her choice. Friends don’t mix well with secret government agencies. Friends outside could never know the truth and friends inside are below her rank._

_She can’t lose more people she cares for. She still washes the blood and screams of lost family from her skin every night. It’s easier not to befriend people._

_However, some people will always be in her life. Sometimes, people are written into other’s stories. There’s no Maria without Fury. She doesn’t know what she’d do, who she’d be, without May, Coulson, and Morse. She has few friends but she’d do anything for them. There lies the issue._

_Maria huffs out a laugh. It’s rough from strain and exhaustion. “Don’t you need to burn Hunter’s clothes still?”_

_Morse lets out a hideous groan and attempts to stand unsupported. She falls back into Maria with a hiss of pain. “When you’re right, you’re right. Still, I might need you to deafen me if you’re going to keep flirting with Natasha.”_

_She sets Morse on the ground as she lays down cover fire. She’s using a wall as cover and peeking around with Romanoff on the other side doing the same. “You need your ears checked.” Maria was absolutely not flirting with Romanoff. It would be unprofessional for one, not to mention she’s not foolish enough to fall for Romanoff’s games._

_She’s tossing Morse’s arm back over her shoulders and setting back down the hallway. “Whatever you say, Deputy Director.” Morse purrs her title with no small amount of mockery._

_“Next time you get yourself captured, I’m leaving you to Barton.” Morse scowls at her. Barton reminds Morse too much of Hunter, she doesn’t hate Barton but she avoids him._

_Maria almost misses it. The slight widening of Romanoff’s eyes. Only slightly, only enough for someone as trained as Maria to see. Even then, it’s definitely a major slip for Romanoff. Romanoff who can be anyone she wants to, display any emotion she wishes. She wonders at what the expression means, what has Romanoff’s guards slip for a moment. She can’t begin to unravel the former assassin._

_The faint clicking of an empty clip pulls her out of her ruminations. She sets the gun down and takes a breath, centering herself. She’s distracted by Romanoff. Maria’s let her challenging attitude get to her. She needs to distance herself from it. She needs to remember herself and gather her self-control once more. A scuff interrupts her thoughts._

_Romanoff stands near the doorway in an easy stance. She’s out of the body suit and in Shield issued BDU’s. Her smug grin is familiar in the way it’s been for months. The same challenge, same predatory aura. Not the same expression. There’s something new. Something Maria can’t identify. It’s as if her expression is highlighted by something else. It’s not changed but maybe it could be. It feels like an open door, propped just enough for Maria to get a hint of the real Romanoff._

_She decides to take a risk while the door is still cracked, while the expression is different enough for Maria to be bold. “Care to see how you fair?” She’s turned the handgun around, handle pointed towards Romanoff._

_Romanoff steps forward, her fingers wrap around the handle slowly. She doesn’t tug, doesn’t even move the gun. “I think I care to see how you fair.” Romanoff’s fingers slide down the gun and to Maria’s own fingers. She presses the Maria’s hand and the gun into her stomach, just below her chest. “Deputy Director.”_

She wakes up to a sweaty body. Not hers, she turns and sees Natasha in distress. “Nat!” She carefully jostles Natasha who snaps awake. “It’s just me. You’re okay, you’re in our bed.” Natasha’s eyes are still far away but she isn’t lashing out or retreating. 

“Maria?”

“Hey.” She brushes Natasha’s bangs back. “Wanna talk about it.” Natasha looks down at Maria’s hands briefly. Maria knows that means she wants to talk about it but doesn’t know how to start. She takes Natasha’s hand and presses a gentle kiss to her fingers.

“I dreamt about the firing range.” That gets a laugh out of Natasha. It’s fragile and Natasha tries to cover it but Maria will take what she can get.

“Of course you’d be dreaming about shooting.”

“Not just the firing range. The first time we shot together.” Finally, genuine happiness takes the place of some of Natasha’s distress.

“I don’t know how much together was going on. You had a vendetta.”

“I did?”

“Yes you!”

“You were the one keeping track.”

“I could hear you counting in your head, Maria.”

“Maybe I’m competitive.” Maria admits grumpily. Natasha lazily stretches, her arm wrapping around Maria’s waist. The now cooled sweat makes Natasha’s nose cold when it presses against Maria’s throat.

“I know. That’s the first time I really saw you.” Maria lazily traces an arm across Natasha’s back, hoping it’ll set her more at ease. She hums her reply, urging Natasha to continue. “I had never seen you so...alive. Bobbi pulled out a side of you I didn’t think existed. Before that I had dismissed you as nothing more than Nick’s favorite soldier. You didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t joke, didn’t show favoritism. Nothing like I expected.”

“I was a robot?” Maria asks sardonically. 

“No.” Natasha’s reply is sharp and quick. Maria has been called a robot or drone behind her back most of her life, it’s nothing new. Natasha’s wide eyes and almost angry twitch of her lips is. “You’re not a robot.” It’s distant and Maria isn’t sure she’s meant to hear.

“Nat?” Natasha leans back in, face pressed into Maria’s neck.

“Kalak.” Maria’s body tense instantly at the word, breathing coming to a halt. Natasha circles Maria’s hip with her thumb and she presses soft kisses to Maria’s throat as she urges her to relax. Maria was mistaken. This position wasn’t for Natasha’s comfort. Natasha knew she’d panic at the dream and preemptively got into position. 

She almost wants to say it’s the Black Widow. Analyzing someone’s weakness and how to maneuver around it. This isn’t Black Widow because she doesn’t end up with a twisted neck and regrets. This is her wife, who’s known her for years. Who knows her better than anyone. She didn’t hunt for a weakness, she didn’t size her up like a target, she just knows. She knows even though Maria has sparsely talked about anything pertaining to Kalak.

Natasha must know the panic, fear, regret, and lingering doubts. Doubts of who she is. The empty feeling that haunts her. She constantly worries she’s not really here, that this isn’t really her. It’s been months but the feeling won’t go away. Maria has become more tactile then before. She understands why Natasha needed so much contact when she figured out about Kalak. It transcends from desire into need. She needs the anchoring feeling of Natasha’s sure touches. 

Maria can’t stand the cold now either. It reminds her of the time she had no soul. Natasha can’t stand it either. 

Maria knows her wife just as well. She knows that Natasha had no issues with the cold before she got dusted. She doesn’t know if it was five years without a warm body beside her in bed or if Vormir is cold. Natasha hasn’t opened up about it just like Maria hasn’t opened up about Kalak.

They’ve always had struggles with communication. They can infer and sense issues but rarely do they bring them up. It’s been changing, improving. Natasha became more open the longer she spent with the Avengers. She wasn’t carefree about being vulnerable, she never would be, but she made leaps and bounds from when Maria first met her. Maria thinks, hopes, she was part of that too. 

Natasha after the Blip is entirely different. She’s more mature than before. Maria isn’t sure it’s a good thing. It’s like how Clint is. The easy manner and jokes more distant, like a memory. For them, it probably is. Laura coaxes out Clint’s playful side but even then it’s shrouded by five years of suffering. Laura and Maria connect off this new development of their spouses. Being taken isn’t easier than being left, it’s just hard in different ways.

Natasha is also more open. She’s freer with her feelings, not entirely free because Natasha didn’t get her personality replaced, but at least more willing to engage in emotional conversations. 

Maria had been closed off due to pride and discomfort at revealing her innermost feelings. That changed with Kalak. Now, she’s terrified at not having feelings, at Natasha thinking she doesn’t.

Her body has untensed, calmed during her thoughts and Natasha’s easy touches. She shifts, rolling them over and tucking into Natasha. “What was the dream about?” Her voice is rough but she’s happy she is able to get it out. 

“I dreamt it killed you.” Maria gives Natasha a sad smile at her words. She lines up one of theirs hands and oddly plays with Natasha’s fingers. 

“It didn’t.”

“We shouldn’t have left the tablet out. We used you as bait.” Natasha sounds so distraught Maria has to interrupt what’s sure to be a tirade. 

“Don’t you dare blame yourself. It was the only way to summon it. It turned out fine. I’m alive.” Maria kisses Natasha deeply, trying to erase this pain. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?” 

“Of course.” Natasha scowls and pushes Maria off her. Maria gets a wave of deja vu, remembering when they broke up.

“Don’t lie to me.” Maria winces, it really is like that. 

That’s when the whispers start. The damned whispers. They hang around in the back of her head, clogging her mind with doubts. It is the same, isn’t it? What if there’s a reason? She grips the sheets in white knuckled fists as Natasha paces unaware of her current state.

It’s moments like these that make her wonder. Is she really here or is she still under Kalak’s control? It’s all too similar, like a simulation that ran out of scenarios so it reskins one. 

She tunes back into Natasha’s vehement words. “I thought we were beyond lying!” 

“Nat.” Whatever her voice carries, Natasha stops.”I am okay, mostly. Just like everyone else.” Natasha’s face flutters, her eyes close.

“Is it so wrong I want better than that? Is it so wrong I want you happy?” Maria reaches out and grabs Natasha’s crossed arms. Natasha doesn’t uncross, she keeps her rigid closed off stance. Maria keeps holding on. She’ll always hold onto Natasha.

“I am happy. I’m happy when I’m with you, when I’m at work, when I’m at the farm, God help me I’m even happy at the Avengers’.”

“Tony?”

She cringes at Natasha’s guess, correct guess of course. “Yeah.”

“You know he loves it. Befriending you is probably his greatest personal achievement.” Natasha laughs and shakes her head, uncrossing her arms. “He’s going to make a plaque soon, I swear.” 

“That’s the thing about Tony.”

“What?”

“He lives in everything he does. Nothing is halfway.” Before Kalak, Tony had been more of a pain in the ass then anything. She didn’t like his attitude, his motivations, anything about him really. Now, she oddly finds herself close to him. It’s different then her friends from Shield who are similar to her in many ways, it’s different from the Bartons who’ve become family, it’s definitely different then Natasha. Still, it’s one of her most important relationships.

He helps her feel real. Whether he knows it or not, she feels like Maria with him. She is exhausted by his hijinks like she used to be but she appreciates his obvious humor in a new way. It bridges the two parts of her. She tries to help him too.

Tony has a lot of struggles, always has. Now, she tries to help him cope with them. She can’t fix his issues, no one can, but she can help him find better ways of dealing with them. He’s already gotten a handle on drinking and women due to Potts and Morgan. It’s the new issues that leave him halved. The PTSD he’s suppressed with drink most of his adult life, the fear of leaving Morgan without a father, the feeling of dying. Dying haunts him just as it haunts Natasha.

“Tell me you aren’t going to make him your maid of honor.” Natasha says. They decided to get married again, this time with all their friends in attendance. They’re going to marry out at Tony’s which he’s ecstatic about it. He’s happy to replace the memory of his funeral from Morgan’s memory with a happier one.

“I’m saving that honor for Fury.”

In the end it doesn’t end up being Fury. Still, he shows up. Dressed sharply, out of his uniform for once. Danvers smiles at him and teases him when he shows up with a fashionable eyepatch. They decided to be a bit unconventional and have a gathering before the wedding actually takes place. 

There’s a lot of people who haven’t seen each other in a while and both Natasha and Maria wanted everyone to get a chance to catch up before the wedding. People show up at different times but everyone gets there before the ceremony starts. That’s how Maria ends up tucked away in the kitchen with Tony and Nebula.

She still likes Nebula with the return of her soul, she even considers her one of her closest friends. She still finds her blunt way of talking refreshing, her competitive nature meshes well with Maria’s own. Nebula hadn’t held Maria’s desouled nature against her. Nebula took the least amount of time to get over it, it was just another day in her life Maria thought. 

_“I know what it feels like to wear the mark of someone else.”_

Maria remembers the way the white lights of Tony’s lab had shined against the metal in Nebula’s skull, how blue Tony’s reactor glowed that day, the way her scar nor the tattoo fade. She remembers just how much the three of them understand one another.

“Morgan outsmarted Nebula.” Nebula scowls at Tony, a look of thinly veiled violence is tossed his way. 

“She cheated.”

“Cheating is its own intelligence. A smart person knows when they have to cheat.”

“Smart people don’t have to cheat.” 

“You don’t think Morgan is smart?” 

Nebula’s eye twitches. No one is immune to Morgan Stark. “She is of acceptable intelligence.”

“Smarter than her dad at least.” Maria adds.

“Damn right.” Tony doesn’t even get offended, he practically puffs with pride. Morgan is the only one of three people who can get him to lower his pride.

“Damn Maria, if I knew you looked that good in a dress I would have proposed.” Bobbi calls out from behind her. She wraps her arms around Maria’s neck and tugs her into an obnoxious hug. 

“You’ve seen me in a dress before.”

“Not a dress like this.” Bobbi lewdly checks her out before looking to Tony and Nebula. “Ah, the rest of the bridal party.” Maria ended up making Bobbi her maid of honor. Melinda declined any part of the wedding party, she wanted to be in the crowd in case anything happens. Tony, Nebula, and Laura accepted her invitation as bridesmaids.

“Nice to meet you.” Tony flashes Bobbi his playboy smile.

“Down boy.” Maria’s swats his offered hand away from Bobbi. She doesn’t think he means anything by it but the last thing she needs on her wedding day is scraping Tony’s tasered ass off the floor.

Melinda eventually joins them. She is more subdued than Bobbi but Maria still finds herself in a half embrace before the ceremony. Bobbi and Melinda don’t fit as well with Tony and Nebula as Maria does but it isn’t awkward or forced. They’re friendly even if they aren’t likely to be friends. 

Natasha gravitates towards Clint and Rogers, a few others gather near them as well. Maximoff is always looking for Natasha at the corner of her eye. She keeps meaning to get to know Maximoff better but hasn’t had a chance. She takes a risk and leaves her circle to approach Maximoff. 

She doesn’t know much about her, having rarely interacted. She knows Maximoff matters to Natasha. She isn’t sure the nature of their relationship but she knows it’s one of Natasha’s most important ones. 

With Clint, they’re partners. Partners in battle, partners in life, partners till death. They’re family, plain and simply. Rogers and her are friends. She’d say best friends if Barnes wasn’t in the picture, then again, Barnes and Rogers are something more than best friends. Maximoff and Natasha? She isn’t quite sure how to describe them let alone feel about them.

She knows they formed a bond through the Avengers. Natasha helped train and guide Maximoff when she first joined. They likely bonded over being the only women in the Avengers at the time. From the little Natasha has said Maria knows she genuinely likes Maximoff. Not only for her fighting abilities but also her personality. Natasha is protective of Maximoff, she worries over her constantly.

Before the Accords she worried over Maximoff’s abilities, her control, how she fared with the team. Slowly it became worrying over Maximoff’s well-being. That’s why Maria was going to ask Kalak to bring her brother back before it had cut her off. 

She wishes she’d pushed harder. She’d been so desperate to get Natasha back she let it dictate their encounter. She has a lot of regrets.

“You could go say hi.” Maria tells Maximoff who’s been watching Natasha and her gathered circle.

“It gets awkward.” Maximoff replies, eye trailing away from the group and towards Maria. “Congratulations.” Her smile is genuine but her eyes are tight. Her eyes are always tight. That’s one of the things Maria first noticed about her. 

“Why would it get awkward?”

Maximoff gives her an amused smile. It’s not mean hearted but it is condescending to a degree. “I’m the girl who lives.” It makes sense. The ice in Maximoff’s cup clinks together when she takes a drink. Maximoff is haunted by loss. Her parents, her brother, her people, her love. 

“We’re all something.” They all have their own traumas and their own sins. It’s not up to them to judge each other.

Maria leans against the wall next to Maximoff. Her arm presses just into Maximoff’s. It’s calculated, perhaps too calculated for someone Natasha considers a friend, but Maria needs to test her. Maximoff twitches slightly but doesn’t move away. Maria takes this to mean even though she feels at odds, she doesn’t want to. Maria lingers in silence with Maximoff, just being there with her. 

She didn’t think it would be that easy to connect with Maximoff. Yet, when she parts to continue to mingle, she knows it is. She knows Maximoff will be another person she can call friend.

When it comes time for the ceremony, she stands waiting for Natasha to arrive. She never wants Natasha to have to wait for her again. Fury stands next to her, hands clasped in front of him.

“I thought you were just attending, sir.”

“You’re my number one Hill. I’d be damned if I didn’t marry you two.”

With all of her friends and family gathered, Natasha moments from appearing, she feels warm and happy. She feels so unlike her time under Kalak’s thrall. She feels better than before. Before, when the Avengers were split and fighting. They’re together again. Some broken, some jagged, some with rifts between them, but together. Alive. 

“I thought Danvers would be your number one.” 

“That’s the thing about favorites, you can always have more than one.” 

She laughs at his blatant favoritism that he doesn’t even try to hide anymore. “I’ll take it. Besides, whenever Danvers pulls her head out of her ass she’ll be the one getting married.”

“She’s already married.” Fury gives her a look that says it all. 

“So am I.”

“So you are.”

Natasha walks down the aisle with an unrestrained smile. Maria can’t help but return it. She could have missed this. She could have very easily lost her.

She’s glad she made the worst deal of her life.


End file.
